


ARCADES -"Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new"

by se_parsons



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Originally Posted Elsewhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:27:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27501532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/se_parsons/pseuds/se_parsons
Summary: Arcades is Latin for "people who live in Arcadia".  The rest of the title is the last line of "Lycidas", which goes to show ifyou're hard up for a title or an idea, rip off Milton.  God knows, Neil Gaiman has made a career out of it.  And done a damn fine job, too.Season 6 has made me sad.  I foresee only bad things.  But, as you might have noticed if you've read any of my other stories, I'm rather like that.  I am dreading Milagro next week.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

ARCADES

As she scrubbed the make-up off her face a little harder than was strictly necessary, Scully wondered what she'd done to deserve it.

It wasn't like they'd been getting along particularly badly or anything. It wasn't as though she'd done anything to criticize him or question his theories any more than usual or to undermine him in any way. Yet since the revelatory events that had led to the death of the conspiracy they'd followed and their return to the X-Files, it was like Mulder was using the opportunity not to happily plunge himself back into his long-delayed life's work, but to take out all the frustrations, the disappointments and the resentments built up over months of shit jobs and shittier treatment on her. 

And this latest assignment was no exception, in fact it was as though he was taking particular pleasure in being as annoying and immature as possible just because they were in such horrible forced proximity. 

Trapped inside the house like rats in a cage.

Well, here was one rat that was getting ready to turn on its companion in the overcrowded conditions and chew it a new bodily orifice or three. Especially if it didn't stop hanging on her, simpering at her and making embarrassingly cutesy and explicitly sexual comments every five minutes or so. Not to mention its sloppy personal habits - toilet seat perpetually up, smashed toothpaste tube, wadded up towels on the bathroom floor, and the sneaking suspicion she harbored that it had been drinking out of containers and then putting them back in the fridge. It had better stop it, and right away, if it knew what was good for it.

Scully rinsed the facial wash from her skin and surveyed the freckled, shiny results critically in the mirror. THAT would serve it right. Even more frightening than the green facial mask of the night before. 

Scully au naturale - take THAT, Rob Petrie, like the dish!

She picked up the horribly mangled toothpaste tube and carefully squeezed the contents from the bottom, rolling the end of the tube upward until her Evil Roommate from Hell came along to undo all her work once more. She brushed her teeth for a good long time, the sharp strokes cleaning the day's accumulated grime from gums and tongue much more easily than she could rid herself of the anger at her asshole partner.

She could hear him out there in the bedroom. Rummaging through the chest of drawers.

Though Mulder was sleeping on the couch, his stuff was all in her room, so the portrait of the nauseatingly happy fictitious Petries could be maintained. She hoped he would put on a normal t-shirt or something instead of the hideous conglomeration of pastel golf shirts and sickly matching sweatsuits he'd been sporting ever since they'd arrived at the Klein House, or the crime scene, or whatever they called this little corner of Hell.

The shuffling footsteps approached the bathroom door, and she knew her little haven of tranquillity and order was about to be shattered yet again. The footsteps hesitated at the door, then moved forward rapidly, the door swinging open to emit a grinning Mulder, clad in sweatpants and a fairly normal gray t-shirt. "Hey, Laura, ya decent?" he said, the wide shit-eating grin letting her know that he half expected the answer to be "no".

When she simply continued brushing her teeth, not even giving him the satisfaction of an answer, Mulder moved on to the next annoyance tactic in his seemingly endless arsenal. Always a space invader, Mulder had used their confinement to the same house as some sort of excuse to ignore the concept of personal space entirely. He was constantly touching her when they had witnesses and she couldn't protest, and then keeping up the crowding in private despite her warning on their first day, all the while acting supremely unaware that it bothered her.

And she just knew he was doing it on purpose, like all the unprofessional cracks about "honeymoon videos" and whatnot that was all going into their report. He'd be lucky if Skinner didn't bring him up on charges for sexual harassment once he saw that crap. The touching was just so excessive. Even in this scary land of perfectly happy marriages and model families, none of them touched each other the way Mulder insisted on touching her. "Spooned right up like little, baby cats", indeed. Nauseating.

Now, instead of moving to one side of the vanity like any normal person, Mulder took up position directly behind her, reaching over her shoulder to get into the medicine cabinet for his own toothbrush. This, despite the fact that the bathroom, like the rest of the house, was huge, and white, and perfect. And cold, and antiseptic, and barren, which was, of course, what Mulder thought of her. He'd said as much the night before after he'd complained of the place's hideous and monotonous sameness and conformity, the facade of perfection hiding empty blankness and lack of character, "You'd fit right in here, Scully" he'd said.

Just because she didn't feel the need to let uneaten take-out ferment into new life forms beneath her couch, just because she didn't think weirdness for the sake of weirdness was necessarily a virtue, didn't mean that Scully didn't feel the wrongness of the place. The Stepford-like quality of the people here made her flesh crawl in ways she hadn't even known existed. And why? So they could have a life in the "right" neighborhood with the "right" people. Who were the "right" people anyway?

There was a hundred times more rightness in the Lone Gunmen than there ever could be in Mr. Gogolak, perfect resident of perfect-land or not. The Gunmen were real. Gogolak was hiding something. And most likely something awful.

Scully spit out her toothpaste and rinsed out her mouth in the sink. It wasn't until she'd pulled out her dental floss, had started in on her left rear lower molar and Mulder actually missed his brush with the center-squeezed toothpaste that she realized what had been going on the entire time she'd been brushing and thinking. He'd been watching her.

Really watching her to the exclusion of everything else. And she kicked herself for her own stupidity as she saw the reason why staring at her from the mirror.

She was not wearing a bathrobe.

She was wearing a white cotton nightgown.

It was not a good combination for company. Especially not for present company.

She was very glad her face was already red from scrubbing, so he wouldn't know she was aware of the way he was rudely staring at her breasts, nipples dark and obvious through the white cotton as she raised and lowered her arms. She just kept flossing, trying to minimize her movement, of course, not that it was going to do any good now. Mulder was riveted.

And he wasn't being polite and pretending not to notice, like a decent partner would. No.

She was surprised she hadn't felt the drool running hotly down her bare shoulder by now.

"Well let him fucking look, then", she thought, finishing up with her floss and rinsing her mouth again. It wasn't going to do him any good.

And she still had to brush her hair before bed. If she didn't, its natural curliness would be completely unmanageable by morning and she had to maintain some level of professionalism and try to look businesslike in some Laura-appropriate sweater-set. Curly hair would simply not do.

As Scully pulled open the drawer on "her" side of the vanity to get her hairbrush, Mulder finished brushing his own teeth and leaned around her to spit into the sink and rinse. His chest grazed her right shoulder as he went by, but otherwise the touching was minimal. For which she was very thankful, indeed.

Taking the brush into her right hand, in order to force him farther away, Scully began running the brush in short, sharp strokes through her hair. Her action had the unfortunate result of stopping Mulder dead in his tracks, whatever he had been going to do forgotten in his renewed fascination with her bosom. 

He only succeeded in making her angrier, and more determined to finish her brushing and ignore him completely. As much as she could ignore a six-foot, space-invading man breathing hotly down the back of her neck, of course.

And she awaited the comment. The comment that was inevitably forthcoming from the ever-assholeish primitive fore-brain of the porn-obsessed Mulder-beast.

And she waited.

And she waited.

And he looked like he was going to say something. He'd opened his mouth, but then he just shut it again and walked out of the bathroom, leaving her in blessed space and silence.

It was almost disappointing.

She'd so been hoping for an opportunity to yell at him.

But maybe he'd just go away and she could get a good night's sleep instead.

That would be nice.

There was a lot to do the next day.

Mulder had arranged to have some men come in to dig up the front yard for a "reflecting pool". Actually it was so they could do a forensic exhumation of whatever was buried there. And Scully, as the resident pathologist would be in charge. A lot of responsibility to get it right.

Scully put away her hairbrush and turned off the bathroom light as she went back out to get into bed.

Only Mulder was there before her.

Tonight he was not only ON her bed, he was IN her bed. With a big stack of Internet download on his lap, the IKEA bedside halogen lamp turned on high and his glasses on.  
He made a frighteningly normal picture as he read through the stack of white paper, piling the already-read portion beside him on the mattress.

He looked for all the world like he belonged there. A normal businessman from normal-land, going over the next day's presentation or stock forms or whatnot, instead of a quasi-insane paranoid FBI agent with an obsession for paranormal phenomenon and a perverted lust for anything female in his remote vicinity.

Scully felt like she'd just fallen somehow into a frightening parallel universe where her partner was NOT an asshole who had not two minutes before been ogling her breasts, but a respectable, decent human being who didn't deserve the butt-kicking she was prepared to give him for being where he was.

"Exactly what do you think you're doing?" she asked him, placing fists on hips for body-language emphasis in case he couldn't gather she was pissed off from her voice or expression.

"Research," Mulder said mildly. "I downloaded this stuff today and didn't get a chance to go through it yet."

"And why are you doing it in my bed?" Scully asked.

"I didn't know the bed was exclusively yours. I mean, you sleep in it, but it has the best light, and I'm tired, and I don't feel like reading at the kitchen table right now. There's crap light in the living room and I don't want to get eyestrain for my trouble, ok?" Mulder said reasonably. "If you want to go to sleep, go to sleep. You  
won't bother me." 

"I can't believe you are doing this after all that bullshit last night," Scully said angrily. "What about, "get out of my room" didn't you get?" 

"I don't see why you're so angry," Mulder said with an air of superiority, but he couldn't hide the twinkle of pure evil that sparkled in his eyes as he concluded. "It's not like I said, "nice tits, Scully" or something."

"What did you say?" Scully said dangerously. She could feel the desire to rip his head off growing exponentially by the second.

"I mean, you DID want me to comment, didn't you?" he asked. "That IS why you went parading around here dressed like that, isn't it?"

"I'd hardly call using the bathroom and brushing my teeth and hair "parading around". You're the one who came barging in on me. I wasn't expecting to be sharing the room with anyone, or I would have put on a bathrobe," Scully protested, and then she stopped herself angrily. "But why the hell am I justifying myself to you? You're the one that's not supposed to be in here. Now get the hell out of my room! Scat!"

Scully pointed imperiously toward the open door of the bedroom, the abrupt movement having the unfortunate effect of getting everything above her waist into some sort of motion under the white cotton nightgown. But she was too pissed off to care.

"This is really sad, Scully. I mean, if you want it that bad you don't have to stand there with a backlight on," Mulder said with a small sigh, putting down his papers and looking at her over the rims of his glasses.

"What the hell are you talking about, Mulder? I'm trying to get you to understand that I want you out of my room. But somehow I'm getting the feeling that either you've ceased to understand the English language or I've been speaking Swahili for the past few minutes," Scully ranted. Then she stopped. "What the hell was that about a light again?"

"Oh, don't pretend you don't know," Mulder said primly, continuing to look at her over his glasses in a raffishly professorial way. It would have made a charming picture if he had been anyone else. Or if she hadn't known he was a total asshole.

Scully looked at Mulder. He continued to look at her over the rims of his glasses. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. And then she looked behind her.

She'd left the bathroom light on and she was standing right in the light from the doorway. It was reflecting brightly from the rows of theatre-style dressing-room bulbs that lined the top of the mirror and lighting up her nightgown like she was standing in a spotlight. Mulder had to be able to see everything she had.

Scully shut her eyes in horror.

"Out of my room," she said, not moving. What was the point, now, after all?

"Just come to bed, Scully," Mulder said, picking his papers back up. "I've got some work to do, but I can take care of you later. You just have to wait a few minutes, that's all."

"But I don't want to wait a few minutes," Scully said in the overly-reasonable tone one reserves for the very young or the very stupid. "I want you to go now."

"Well I'm not going, so deal," Mulder said not looking up from his papers. "I have a legitimate reason to be here, and I'll stay here until I'm done. Then we can see about your needs so you can stop this pathetic acting out and then I can go down and hit the couch and get some sleep."

Scully couldn't believe it. She was engaged in a turf war with her partner over a piece of furniture. It was even worse than the office desk and nameplate thing.  
She wasn't even going to touch the sexual insults. Not even going there.

She had a couple of options. She could simply leave the room and go downstairs and sleep on the couch herself, but she wouldn't put it past Mulder to come down there himself just after she'd gotten to sleep and wake her up in some unpleasant fashion. Probably by touching her in some totally inappropriate way. It seemed quite unappealing as an option, and in addition the rental couch was new and overstuffed and therefore uncomfortable enough to sit on, so she hated the idea of trying to sleep on it. And, though she didn't like to admit it, there was something about the house that gave Scully the creeps, and the open floorplan of the downstairs made her feel exposed. Like someone was watching her. She didn't think she could get any sleep down there at all.

So that left facing the dragon in its lair. Or in her lair, actually.

Maybe if she just got into bed with him and totally ignored him no matter what he did, she could get her point across and he'd get bored and go downstairs to sleep on the couch. Sort of like playing dead when you were attacked by a bear.

Well, she wasn't getting anywhere standing there indecisively. And Mulder was doing a pretty good job of pretending to be interested in what he was reading, though he'd been flipping through pages that were upside down for the past minute or so, pretending he was reading them before passing them over to the stack of read pages at his side.

Deciding finally to face the monster head-on, Scully just turned around and shut off the bathroom light and then turned around again, catching Mulder turning back to his papers, and then went over to the bed. She shut off the light on her side and crawled under the covers, turning on her side at the very edge of the Queen size mattress, away from Mulder and his light.

It meant she had her back to him. Which wasn't exactly a way to feel secure with what he might be planning. But it did make her seem serious about getting some sleep, and serious about getting sleep she was.

She lay there very still, trying to slow her breathing and fall into a state of anything other than total wakefulness. But every time she started to relax, Mulder would turn a page, flicking the stiff paper loudly. Or he'd sigh, or mumble, or shift on the mattress and give her a little jolt, waking her right back up again.

She knew he was doing it purposefully, but she just ignored him. Then he'd go away. He had to. He had to go away or she was going to kill him and bury his body under the perfect lawn just as he suspected had happened to the Kleins.

After he'd kept it up for about forty-five minutes by her rather accurate internal clock, Mulder finally stopped shuffling through the papers and stacked them up in some orderly fashion and leaned over the side of the bed and put the stack down on the floor. Then she heard his glasses click as he set them down on the nightstand. Then he turned down the lamp.

He didn't turn it off. He just turned it down. That did not bode well, she thought.

Then she felt the mattress shake and depress beneath his weight as he slid down into the bed and over next to her, invading her space again. She could feel the warmth of his body as he lay there waiting, just inches from her, and his hot breath on the back of her neck.

She thought of his red blood staining the pristine whiteness of the sheets and the carpet. She almost smiled, but still hoping he'd leave her in peace, she repressed the desire.

The anticipation was horrible.

If he would only act then she would be able to react.

But he seemed to want to make her sweat it out.

Well, he wasn't going to get the satisfaction of knowing he was succeeding.

If he had fallen asleep back there she was going to kill him twice. 

That was when he started touching her, but she couldn't tell what he was doing - what he MEANT by it, so she continued to wait.

They were both lying on their right sides, far over on that side of the bed, and Mulder was brushing her hair away from her face with his left hand, gently. Maybe he simply thought she'd fallen asleep despite his best efforts to keep her up, if so -then Scully had what she wanted. All she had to do was pretend to be asleep and he'd give up and go away.

She suppressed a smile at the fact that she was winning and lay perfectly still, trying to keep her breathing perfectly regular and deep.

That was when she felt Mulder's lips on the nape of her neck.

She remained frozen in place though every nerve in her body was suddenly on the alert. The touch was very light. Not enough to wake her if she had truly been asleep, so she had to endure it.

And it wasn't as though the touch itself would have been much to endure under normal circumstances. Under perfectly normal circumstances it would have been pleasant, nice, comforting. It was just that it was Mulder, her asshole partner, doing it. Her asshole partner who was invading her bed and touching her as if he really WERE her husband. As if he had the right.

And after he'd insulted her just minutes before, too. Take care of her needs. She'd show him her needs all right. Right now she needed to see him writhing in pain, begging for mercy, eating his nasty and sarcastic words. Preferably while being felt up by a very ugly and overweight female ex-weightlifter from the Russian Olympic team.

She really couldn't think of another instance where Mulder would mind being felt up. Not that he'd done THAT exactly. But he'd hung on her like she was his possession, his trophy, ever since they'd come to Arcadia. The only way he could have been more territorial and obvious is if he'd peed on her and then on the house - HIS house, HIS wife, HIS partner, even this was all about him.

Mulder's lips moved farther left, from her nape to just under her ear, just the lightest of caresses, still too light to "wake" her. And she could feel the slightest of touches on her back where his chest was pressing against her as he curled his body around hers. What the hell was he up to? It was infuriating to have to just lay there while he did whatever he wanted. But if she moved or reacted, she lost. He'd know he'd bothered her.

Then Mulder's left hand joined his lips, his fingertips trailing so lightly over the skin of her bare arm that if she hadn't known he was up to something, she might have missed it entirely. That was, until he used them to so very gently brush the strap of her nightgown off her shoulder, so his lips could move over that part of her as well.

Scully knew that things were getting dangerous, but she felt trapped. Trapped like the rabbit hiding in the tall grass is trapped by the circling hawk, or the stalking dog, or in this case, the stalking Fox. 

She'd almost have rather been in danger of her life, because right now something much more vital was at stake - her pride. Her self-respect, her ability to face Mulder, her chance of winning in this sick little game they'd begun playing, all of them were dependent on how she reacted to whatever he tried next.

And she just wished it hadn't been so long since anyone had touched her. So that what he was doing wouldn't feel so good. She wanted him to stop, of course. It was just that she wanted him to go on as long as possible before he did. Because Mulder DID know how to touch her. He knew just what she liked, no matter how much she told him she didn't want it.

No matter how possessive he was, no matter what demeaning thing he said, no matter how much she wanted to scream or hit him or just get the hell away from him, every time he touched her she had to fight herself to keep from leaning into it. To let him know that she knew better than to allow him to do that. But she couldn't think of anything that had ever felt better than the light touch of his lips on her bare skin.

Mulder had kissed her shoulder quite thoroughly in that feather-light way that wouldn't wake her up. He seemed quite expert at it. Which made her wonder. Had there been other times when he'd done this, or something similar, and she didn't remember? Mulder seemed to know exactly what she liked. But how could he? They'd never been intimate, and she knew he didn't know anyone she had been with closely enough to ask them or to have heard stories.

Now he was running the back of his hand lightly over the flesh of her spine, still kissing her gently on the neck. Scully suppressed a shiver of delight. He was such a bastard, and yet he could still do this.

For one, mad second Scully allowed herself to wonder what more might be like. How he would touch her as she lay beneath his weight. How that skillful mouth would feel on hers, on her breast, between her thighs.

Scully took a firm grip on herself. It would not do to allow herself to be carried away by him now. By his touch. It would mean that she would lose, because she would have allowed him to belittle her and then would have rewarded him for it. And the proximity alone was dangerous. There would be no trips down to San Diego tomorrow. She'd have an entire day spent in the house - with Mulder. Probably wearing some annoying golf shirt, an equally annoying expression of middle-aged complacency and a shit-eating grin if she'd allowed him to get away with anything. That would be unendurable torture. Bad enough to have to be with him at all these days. Mulder lightly squeezed her nipple and Scully mentally cursed herself for drifting off into her own musings. 

While she'd had her mental lapse, Mulder had taken the opportunity to move from feather-light invitations to play into full assault mode. Somehow he'd gotten his right arm around her waist and had insinuated the left into the bosom of her nightgown. How had she failed to notice? And how was it that she found herself with back arched and neck extended into the crook of his shoulder, while Mulder placed kisses on her throat hot enough to leave a mark. Scully jerked her body to stiff attention. "Mulder! What are you doing?" she said, bringing her hand up to grasp his where it rested inside her nightgown.

"The same thing I've been doing for the last ten minutes, as if you hadn't noticed," he said into her neck. The words were slightly muffled, but she heard him well enough. Mulder ran his thumb in a circle around her nipple and sucked on her neck.

"Mulder! Stop it!" she said, plucking ineffectually at his caressing hands.

"Why?" he asked, not taking his lips away from her. "You don't really want me to."

"Yes I do!" Scully cried. "Of course I do! Have you lost your mind?"

Much to her simultaneous relief and sadness, Mulder removed his hand from inside her nightgown. He hitched his body backward more toward the center of the bed and away from her, and she was relieved that she hadn't had to be too mean to get him to let her go. Unpleasant scenes just before bed were the worst. And now he'd leave and everything would be fine.

But Mulder hadn't apparently been planning to leave. When he got himself to the center of the bed, he simply used the arm still around her and the other to turn her over and drag her back there with him. He was just moving her into position, but it was one of those things designed by the universe to just make Scully go ballistic. She hated  
being small, and she hated being reminded of how small she was. Especially in so cavemannish a fashion. Another Mulder expression of MINE. 

My Scully. Here. Grunt.

Scully remembered that stupid Caveman movie with Ringo Starr that had played on HBO about a zillion times when she was in high school. That was what he was acting like. She could still reconstruct the dialog. Considering there were like three words in the whole movie it wasn't exactly a challenge. Mulder zug zug Scully. That's what he was after. Zug zug. When Scully wanted someone who would alunda Scully. And this was definitely NOT Mulder alunda Scully. It was all about zug zug. Well, here was one caveman who was definitely not going to be getting any zug zug tonight.

Scully put her hands flat on Mulder's t-shirt-covered chest and pushed. To absolutely no result whatsoever.

"Wow, Scully, you're so limp. It's like we really ARE married," Mulder quipped, settling himself down on top of her. Well she knew what the weight part was like. Mulder was grinning at her in a lopsided fashion other people might no doubt have found charming. Mulder certainly seemed to. He thought he was cute. The bastard. Scully didn't have time for this crap. She decided to go for the low blow.

"Not only me, Mulder. But I suppose I can understand it in a man of your age," she said with a smile that was really a mere bearing of teeth. Showing the Fox her fangs. "It's really nothing to be ashamed of. Or to worry about. Just part of the body's natural aging processes."

"What are you talk- Oh, I see." Mulder smiled about as evil a smile as she'd ever seen on him. Then he placed both hands on her thighs just above the knees and pulled them farther apart, moving over her to drop himself down between them. "I think you've forgotten just how short you are again, Scully. But all that requires is just a little change in position."

Mulder pulled on Scully's spread thighs dragging her downward so that she could feel-Oh this was really not at all what she wanted right now.

"What was it that you were saying about the aging process again?" he asked, challenge written all over his piercing hazel gaze.

"Oh-" was all she managed as he pushed against his chest again. 

"Oh-oh-.just- just-.bite me, Mulder!"

"Your wish is my command," he said and lowered his head until Scully felt his teeth lightly grazing her left nipple through the cotton of her nightgown.

"Would you stop that?" she practically shrieked, appalled at how high and shrill her voice had suddenly gotten.

"But you just asked me to do it!" Mulder protested innocently. "You know all you have to do is tell me what you want. You know I'd do anything for you." Scully wanted to kill him again for the horribly sincere way he'd said that last part. Especially in light of the way he'd been mocking her ever since they'd come to the Falls. Because he HAD gone to the ends of the fucking earth for her. He HAD risked his life again and again on her behalf and other times when he thought he was keeping her safe. He HAD trusted her with many of his secrets.

But that didn't make him any less of a bastard for the way he was treating her now. In fact, it made it worse. More awful, more demeaning, because it was just a mockery of something that might once have been beautiful between them. But now, it was only the ashes of something long ago burnt out. And ashes are sad things, their life gone. They can give no warmth or comfort. Thank God he hadn't kissed her, because she knew that's what she would have tasted.

Scully just couldn't look at him any more. She couldn't bear to see that mocking expression on his face. To view him in all his assholeish splendor. Because of the time when she hadn't felt that way about him, no matter what he did. No matter what stupid thing he'd said. Because he'd never meant to be an asshole before. And now he did. He wanted to be an asshole. He wanted to torture her. And she didn't know why. She didn't know what she'd done to deserve it. She thought nothing.

Scully closed her eyes and turned her face away from him, drawing her body up as tightly as she could, cringing away from his touch like a turtle drawing back inside its shell.

"No!" Mulder said explosively right beside her ear. "No you don't, goddamnit! Not this time!"

Scully cringed away from the sound of his voice.

"You were human just a minute ago. I saw it," Mulder hissed. "I won't have you turning back into this thing! Do you hear me, Scully? Yell at me. Hit me. Do something, just don't- just don't do this." 

Scully looked back at him. The pain in his voice demanded her attention. She needed to see if he was manipulating her, or if it was in his eyes as well. But when she opened her eyes it was to find he'd already closed his own as he lowered his mouth to hers and they had their first taste of each other.

And Scully was wrong about the ashes.

Mulder tasted of many things: anger, disappointment, bitterness, pain, hunger, longing, loneliness, tenderness, resentment, pride, lust, devotion, possessiveness, desire, passion, need, and loyalty. It all made one powerful combination, nearly impossible for her to refuse. Which was when she realized that she'd ceased wanting to refuse right about the time he'd started kissing the nape of her neck.

Why was she such a complete fool for this man? 

Anyone else and she would have been out the door years ago.

And she would never have known what it was to kiss him, to feel his body next to hers, to have him lying on top of her ready to make love or war, or whatever it was that they were doing to one another. 

Scully was gripping the sheets on either side of them so hard that they were beginning to come away from the mattress, but she wouldn't put her arms around him. She had to claim some kind of moral superiority even though he was kissing the hell out of her and shoving his tongue so far inside her mouth she was sure he could feel the filling on her back molar and she was letting him do it as much as he wanted.

But letting him do it wasn't the same as doing it herself.

She could still claim it hadn't been her idea.

"Scully," Mulder moaned into her mouth and then moved his mouth back to her throat while his left arm locked around her and his right hand began moving in a disturbing fashion over her thigh. "Please don't do this. Don't leave me."

"W-what are you talking about?" she breathed as his hot mouth found her nipple again through the cotton fabric of her nightdress.

"Ev-ever since we got back from Antarctica," Mulder said. "It's like a part of you, of us, never came back. You don't trust me. When you look at me all I see is a blank wall, or contempt. And I don't know which one is the hardest to face."

Scully didn't know what to say. It was true. But not for inexplicable reasons. But she was more than aware that he didn't want to know those reasons. That if he heard them that was the end of even this shadow of their partnership.

But how could he not know? He was the one that had been on his way to the hangar with Fowley when she'd made her last-ditch attempt to intercept Cassandra Spender. If she hadn't called him- Well most likely he'd have been fried along with his father's colleagues and she, herself, would have been taken back aboard the Goodship Cloneipop for more experimental breeding projects. Or else simply impregnated with an alien to incubate, as had already been attempted in Antarctica.

But Mulder was clueless as to why she was cold to him.

She had to be.

That or die of sorrow.

And to think he'd told her he loved her.

And once when he hadn't been drugged to the gills, though not in so many words. "You make me a whole person," certainly seemed like love to her, though. Even at her most literal-minded that sounded like love to her.

"And tell me, Mulder, just what is there to come back to?" she found herself saying.

Mulder looked at her, and she could see something akin to her own sorrow in the look on his face, in his eyes.

"This," was all he said, and then he kissed her again. And his body grew more insistent along with his mouth and his hands. Ever physical, Mulder was falling back into his own preferred means of expression, when really what they needed to do was talk to each other for once.

But Scully knew where this was coming from at least. And there was a kind of sincerity in it. There was nothing demeaning in the way he touched her, no matter what he said. 

Mulder was gentle, almost reverent in his ministrations to her body, and she couldn't help but respond. She didn't want to not respond. She wanted him. She wanted them together. And if she couldn't have him as her partner, the way he had been, then this was good enough for now. It would make all the rest easier to take somehow. If it wasn't moving forward, then at least it wasn't the same awful stasis where they bit and fought at each other like weasels. No, they'd just fuck like weasels instead.

Scully was glad Mulder had his face buried in her shoulder so he didn't see her smiling humorlessly at the weasels thing. She wouldn't want him to get the wrong impression, that she thought this was a joke. She knew it wasn't.

Just like all his cracks about honeymoon videos and playing house hadn't been jokes. This is what they'd been about. This is what Mulder thought they should have been doing all along - ever since he told her how he felt. She knew that. But what he didn't know was that the only reason she was allowing it to happen now was that she knew it was already a lost cause, and she knew that she wouldn't be able to live with herself later if she'd never let herself know what it was like. What he was like this way.

They were lost. Mulder was not her husband. He never would be her husband. And once he knew what it was with her, he'd wonder why he'd thought he'd wanted it in the first place.

Mulder was like that. Flighty. Easily bored. Always having to go on to the next problem, the next case. He was due for a change. She'd seen it in his stubborn refusal to believe any ill of Diana Fowley. Even if he hadn't recognized it in himself, she had. He was ready to move on.

But not before he knew.

And that's what this was all about.

He was determined to stick until he wore her down. Until she'd given him what he wanted.

And then there could be closure, resolution. Then there could be, "Sorry Scully, we tried, but it just didn't work out."

That's what Mulder wanted.

And her heart was broken anyway, so what did it hurt to give him what he wanted? It wouldn't make it easier, but he might be a little less abusive as they wound down to their final, sad conclusion. And it wasn't wrong for her to look out for herself.

Scully had never loved anyone so much, nor had she ever felt so hopeless. She didn't realize she was crying until Mulder noticed and began kissing away her tears, mumbling nonsense into her ear, running one hand through her hair even as he moved the other inside her, readying her for the conclusion of their sad, hopeless coupling.

Scully loosed her grip on the mattress and clung to him madly. Because he was the only thing that was real. Because she didn't care anymore what he thought. Because she wasn't looking for an out or an excuse or a way to save face. That just didn't matter any more. She just wanted to touch him, to know what it was before it was gone.

And he would interpret it the way he wanted to anyway, no matter what she did, no matter what she really thought or felt. Mulder would just see the Scully he wanted to see at the moment, the Scully he loved, the Scully he hated, the Scully that was somewhere in-between, and he'd never ask her what it really was. He'd never talk to her.

He was afraid of the Truth.

The Truth would force him to make a choice. It would force him to examine his own actions and his own feelings, and he didn't want to face that. So much easier to blame her and to justify things to himself in light of her reactions or non-reactions.

Mulder kissed her again as he eased himself inside her. And that was a completion of sorts. The completion of six years of wondering. The completion of the ending of their union. After this, they would never really be together again even if they decided it was all right to have sex. Because that was all it would be - having sex. They would never make love and Scully had so wanted to make love with him even if it was only once. She had thought about it often when she was dying, and she'd come so close so many times. She wished it had been then and not now. It would have meant something then. Now she just couldn't stop crying silently even as Mulder brought her closer and closer to climax.

How could he destroy her emotionally and fulfill her sexually in the same moment? It shouldn't be possible.

But they'd done the impossible together more than once. And Scully supposed this was just more of the same.

She said his name quietly as she felt reality rocking away beneath her on the tides of orgasm. But it left her feeling emptier than before, even as he continued thrusting inside her, moving closer and closer to his own release.

"I love you, Scully," is what Mulder said as she felt him come inside her and his weight sink down onto her body.

She held him close and wondered what it would have been like if he'd really meant it. Because this wasn't good at all.

Mulder fell asleep almost immediately, arms wrapped tightly around her, head pillowed on her chest.

Scully was left alone, awake and dreading what was to come.

-30-


	2. Arcades - Look homeward angel now, and melt with ruth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Look homeward angel now, and melt with ruth
> 
> Arcades is Latin for "people who live in Arcadia". I'm sticking with Milton for the subtitle and "Lycidas", a dandy little poem about a young man from Cambridge (Edward King) who was lost at sea. It fits the mood of Season 6: Mulder and Scully, lost at sea.
> 
> And yeah, I know Thomas Wolfe already stole the line for a title. But this ain't no "Look Homeward, Angel" believe me. The LAST word is your clue.

TITLE: Arcades II: (Look homeward angel now, and melt with ruth) 1/2  
AUTHOR: Sarah Ellen Parsons  
E-MAIL ADDRESS: se_parsons@yahoo.com  
DISTRIBUTION: Archive wherever you want, just keep my name attached.  
SPOILER WARNING: Everything, 6th season, Arcadia, Alpha, Trevor.  
RATING: Hard R for references to real life.  
CLASSIFICATION: Story, Mulder/Scully, Mulder-angst, UST, and H.  
KEYWORDS: Angst?

Arcades II: (Look homeward angel now, and melt with ruth)

Mulder had finally figured out that she still didn't get it. Any normal person would have realized what was really going on in that house in The Falls at Arcadia, but Scully was being more than usually dense. Stubbornly and unusually dense. And Mulder was just really fucking tired of catering to this poser skepticism. He could take the real skepticism, the scientific skepticism, the skepticism that worked for them instead of against them. But this was just bullshit and he was through with it. It was time for her to wake up and smell the coffee.

He'd even brought her coffee, in bed, the next morning. After they'd made love again and she'd screamed his name like a madwoman when she came. 

Yeah, it had been early. Yeah, the contractor was coming with the bobcat. So there'd only been time for a quick one before they'd had to hit the shower and get the hell out to supervise. 

But he'd brought her the coffee. With cream and sugar. Just the way she liked it.

You'd think that would mean something, wouldn't you? It would have to someone who didn't have so much invested in doubting him and suspecting everything he did.

Mulder had no idea how it had come to this.

It was making him feel desperate. Desperate like he had felt only once before, when he'd realized Phoebe was bored with him and was thinking about moving on. Really moving on and leaving him.

He'd gotten used to her casual infidelity; he'd even justified it to himself. But it was when Phoebe's eyes had actually begun glazing over when he spoke, when he'd seen her scoping out other guys while he was there with her- sometimes holding her hand.

Scully was becoming like that. She was drifting out of his orbit somehow. And he hadn't the slightest idea why.

And he was angry. And he was taking it out on her. And he knew it. But somehow he couldn't stop himself. Because it was all so fucking stupid. 

He'd told her how he felt. More than once. He'd hung himself out there and actually said it. Said it after proving it for five years with everything he did and every breath he took. And she'd fucking blown him off. Like it was nothing. Like he'd done nothing, risked nothing, exposed himself to nothing by telling her.

He'd bared his fucking throat to her fangs and she'd dug right in with the death-grip just like he'd feared.

But now she seemed content to hold him there, rolled over on his back, tail between his legs, ears hopefully forward while she debated whether or not to rip his throat out and kill him.

What a bitch.

The fact that they'd just finished working on the case of the Killer Doggie of Doom, didn't hurt the dog analogies bouncing around his head, either.

It was probably why he'd done what he'd done the night they'd wrapped up the case. And he wasn't really sure that he was sorry, either, despite Scully's prissy coldness and haughty demeanor since.

Maybe biting the back of her neck like that had been a little over the top, but from the way she'd been thrusting that gorgeous ass back at him and growling sort of low in her chest, he didn't think she'd actually minded. It wasn't like she didn't want him. That was the part that pissed him off the most.

Scully wanted him. He knew it. She knew it. There was no fooling around about it any more, but she was going out of her way to distance herself from him nonetheless. To make it seem like it was all about getting off and not about getting together.

And the worst of it was the way that Scully let him know that it was because she believed it was about getting off for him, that she was being that way, herself. When he looked at her now, there was nothing in her eyes. And her eyes had always been so full before. Full of something, anyway-- amusement, irritation, pain, concern, interest,  
barely contained exasperation, and love. He knew that he'd seen love there, or he never could have summoned the courage to open his own heart to her. He would have taken it to his grave. He could never have spoken it, no matter how much he'd felt it, if he hadn't seen it reflected in those huge, blue eyes more than once.

And he'd said it. He'd taken the plunge. And she still didn't believe him. What more could he do?

He was doing the only thing he knew how to do, show her. He couldn't help but hope that if he just took her to bed enough and showed her how he felt about her, how she made him feel, she would finally get it. She would open that tightly barricaded heart of hers just a tiny crack and let him in. Like a camel through the fucking eye of a needle.

Surprisingly enough, after all her good-girl prissiness, it turned out it was a lot easier to get into Dana Scully's pants than it was into her heart. Except that he knew he already had been in that heart for some time. It's just that she'd kicked him out. Kicked him out of his rightful place there and was making him beat against its doors, with  
his cock, it turned out. Because bed was the only place that she was remotely honest with him these days.

He could just begin to see it in her eyes when she lay gasping and sweating underneath him, her arms locked tight around his back. When the distrust was momentarily forgotten and the woman he loved was backand truly with him as she had been on that ice pack in the Antarcticvastness, just after he'd almost lost her - again.

And now he was more in danger of losing her than ever, and he knewthat he was doing everything wrong. But it was like some mad compulsion, like demon possession. He was just so angry. Every timehe said something, and instead of listening to him as she used to do,she just brought up some knee-jerk reason why it was wrong or why he  
was a nitwit for believing it. 

He actually wanted to smack her. Or shake her. Or throw her downacross the desk or morgue slab or car seat, or whatever inappropriate place they were in and fuck her until she forgot how to disagree withhim. Until what they were achieving together became more importantthan her pose as "skeptic" or "scientist" or "sane partner" or  
"Mulder-bane" or whatever role it was she was playing these days. 

Because she wasn't being Scully.

Scully knew what partnership was, what it all meant. She knew that they were ALWAYS working together for a common goal. Now it was like that connection was severed, and he had no idea what had severed it.

It hadn't been the shit assignments, though that, and his own disinterest in the work, had strained it. But every ass-chewing they'd taken from Kersh, they were in collusion, just as they always had been.

It had been the look sideways from under lashes, the little twitch at the corner of her mouth. The defensive arms-crossed posture while she leaned toward him with her hip. THAT was Scully. His Scully.

And he'd had her freeze on him before, too, but that was merely Scully trying to protect herself from feeling too much. This was something else entirely. This was Scully trying to protect herself from him. Like he was the enemy. Like he wanted to hurt her.

And in a strange sort of way he DID want to hurt her. He wanted to punish her for the mistake of not falling into his arms when he'd come back from the Bermuda Triangle and finally blurted out his true feelings for her. For denying him that moment - that relief - after all the years of trying to hide it. For fucking blowing it off like it meant nothing, or like he was lying, or worse, didn't know his own mind, his own heart.

Yeah, he might be out of touch with some things, like procedure, decorum sometimes, official rules, crap, but he DID know how he felt about things. And how he felt about Scully was one of the most important things of all. He'd spent hours enough in the office, in cars, at his apartment, at the gym, in hotel rooms in the middle of strange cities, on planes and in hospital rooms, especially in hospital rooms, thinking about it to know what he felt. His was a totally fucking examined life. But right now it didn't feel that much worth living, not if Scully was going to ditch him.

And it felt more and more like she was every day.

Oh, it wasn't like he didn't have his little victories.

Every time he woke up with her on a morning after, he chalked one up for the Mulder hometeam. Every time he touched her and she didn't flinch, but leaned into it like she used to. Every time she put her arms around him right away, as soon as he started anything, that was a big victory. A huge victory. That first time-.he'd almost chickened  
out. There was just something so horrible about touching her and having her not touch him back. It was like making love to the corpse of Scully, or her ghost.

And they'd come so close to that so many times already.

But she was getting better about the physical stuff. In fact, the more often they went to bed together, the better it got, instead of wearing itself out. Scully seemed less self-conscious, less inhibited.

But that worried him in some ways more than the other would have. Because he had the feeling she was comfortable because she'd just stopped caring what he thought of her. That it was JUST fucking for her, bodies making one another feel good. It was all too apparent that it was the emotional side of things where the real absence was.

And it wasn't like he didn't have his victories there, either. He seemed especially lucky first thing in the morning - when she was still sleepy.

Something most people didn't know about Dana Scully was that she was rotten at waking up in the morning. Oh, she could spring out of her bed and rush off after paranormal phenomena at a moment's notice, but when there was nothing really pressing or urgent, she really resented getting up. Her snooze alarm was well worn and she was downright evil before her first cup of coffee. But if you caught her at the right second, just between sleep and waking-Then she'd smile and put her arms around you because she'd momentarily forgotten all about the fact that she didn't love you anymore and that you were the enemy. And then you could hold her as much as you wanted and kiss her and tell her how glad you were to be in her bed and how much she made you feel. And she wouldn't interrupt and she wouldn't tell you you were crazy or drugged. She'd just listen and let you kiss her beautiful sleepy face as much as you wanted. And sometimes she'd make little sleep/waking sounds and snuggle her little nose into your collarbone while she hugged you like mad. And she'd just stay there for the longest time, feeling great, smelling all warm and great, and it would be all you wanted and, well, great.

And then sometimes you'd make love and she'd kiss you back and hold onto you, just like you always wanted. But you'd know it was only because she was pretending to still be dreaming, pretending that she didn't really know what she was doing. So that she could pretend it hadn't happened later. So she could pretend she didn't love you, even  
though she did and you both knew it.

Mulder was really sick of that shit.

That was probably why he was being such a bastard to her, all defensive about his e-mail "relationship" with Karin, even though that unfortunate woman was now on a slab in the morgue with her killer, Fido. Crap, Scully had been the cause of that in the first place. The amazing nexus of insane boredom and 110 pounds of pure sex locked in a  
basement for several hours together causing him to establish a bizarre connection with a woman who had more in common with canids than she did with human beings. Of course, he hadn't told Scully about it. Maybe if he came clean she'd have stopped being so defensive and suspicious about his "trust" of Karin. 

Karin was-had been... utterly harmless. And a good person, too. He'd eventually felt bad about the prurient nature of their relationship and had come clean about who he was. They had made a real connection on issues a lot more substantial than sexual position. But he had absolutely no real interest in her. How Scully could possibly be  
threatened, he had no idea. He was absolutely hers. How could she still question his commitment?

He knew how. He was doing it. It seemed he was doing everything possible to make her doubt him. It was as though he had some sort of pathological need to sabotage his one grab at happiness.

Like yesterday. He didn't know what sort of evil demon had actually possessed him and had forced him to mock her outright, mock her, when she'd suggested spontaneous human combustion as a possible means of death on their latest case. She was reaching. She was trying. She was actually trying to believe and he'd thrown it back at her like it  
was another pose. 

It hadn't been. He wasn't stupid.

But still he managed to sabotage every good thing that came his way. Managed to turn away every gesture of reconciliation she made, and spent all his energy nailing her to the mattress instead of trying to work out their problems vertically, where they'd all been made in the first place.

He knew he was tired, and he had a right to be. But she was tired, too. He could see it in the stiffness of her posture, the strain around her eyes. Even her hair looked tired these days, just hanging limply down instead of springing up in little wavelets and curls that she couldn't contain.

And he knew what a lot of it was coming from. It had started with their demoralization and humilation after being taken off the X-Files, but they could have lived through a lot longer of that without cracking. No the cracks had begun to break through the surface and cause damage on the day he'd confronted CGB Spender in Diana Fowley's  
apartment and had learned the truth about the conspiracy they'd spent so long trying to break.

The old men who were trying to save the world.

It was awfully hard, and irksome to think of them like that. The Evil Bastards, seemed so much a better way. But did you call Truman an Evil Bastard for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima to try to end the war years sooner? When he sincerely believed that that was the purpose of what he was doing? Would the people that would have died fighting in those extra years of war have called him that and gladly given their lives to save the people of Hiroshima? Mulder thought not. Would the people of Hiroshima have gladly given their lives to save the lives of extra millions? Possibly.

But the people of Hiroshima like all of those touched by the Old Men and their Plan had had one thing in common. They'd all lacked the choice. None of them had known. It was all done behind closed doors and in secret. Secrecy alone meant the plan was evil, didn't it?

Well, Mulder didn't know anymore. It sounded plausible, but he didn't know deep down in his soul that it was evil. That evil was all they had meant. Listening to him, the Smoking Man, CGB Spender, whoever he was- he'd sounded so convinced. He was so certain he was doing the right thing. So certain he'd made sacrifices to save others. How did you argue with a man who believed?

Scully had never been able to.

And now Mulder couldn't either.

And it had left him feeling lost, rootless. The foundations of his universe had been split and rent apart. And then put back together again, but not in the same relation. Everything was slightly askew. Things that had been comfortable were not. Things he had been certain of either no longer existed, or were changed. And it had all happened  
at once.

Mulder had counted on Scully to be the one thing he could always be certain of.

But somehow, that had changed as well.

It had all become personal. She'd even said so. And that was not a normal sort of thing for Scully to admit. But with her admission, the personal portion of their partnership had seemed to disappear overnight. She'd been cold to him. Downright mean. And when he'd tried to place his hand in the small of her back, or touch her shoulder as they walked up the sidewalk to the FBI Building, she'd hurried forward, so she wouldn't have to feel his touch.

And she'd done it not once, but every day. 

He'd seen his salvation staring at him in the face when the Arcadia assignment had come across his desk.

A bullshit assignment. Frivolous. The sort of thing he wouldn't have expected of Skinner. But it had had one quality redeeming enough to make him take it up and pretend that he believed it was something. The chance to pretend to be Scully's husband for the duration of the assignment.

And he had made as much use of the proximity that afforded as he possibly could. Even if he hadn't been really nice to her while he was doing it. That made it almost authentic, didn't it? And god knew, they'd been close enough and had built up enough frustrations and resentments in the course of their partnership that marriage was almost  
moot. In every important way, they were married already.

They were the only significant person of the opposite sex in one another's lives; they spent most of their waking hours together; they knew one another's likes, dislikes, pet peeves, quirks and, in some cases, more than quirks. They'd stood by one another in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, richer and poorer after Kersh had started fining them, and Mulder knew that the only thing that could part them would be Death. And they'd managed to cheat her once or twice already.

Yes, what had happened at that house in Arcadia had simply been him finally exercising his husbandly privilege. Because she was his. There was no question about it. 

And the fact that there had actually turned out to be an X-File there, too, had been an added benefit and just more proof as far as he was concerned that they just had to get back to normal. He'd thought they'd made some kind of progress in the rented bed in the house at the Falls.

He'd got them communicating after a fashion, anyway. But now Scully seemed absolutely determined to shut him back down, to shut him out. Despite the fact that she was practically fucking him in half on a regular basis and she'd been insanely jealous over someone as harmless as Karin Berquist. He just didn't understand it.

In fact, he was growing increasingly desperate, and it was showing. And not attractively, either.

Again, it was something he'd realized during the Arcadia assignment. He didn't need to just be fucking her on the sly. No, he needed a hell of a lot more than that. He needed the acknowledgment - the public acknowledgment from Scully and everyone else - that she belonged to him. That they were Together. 

He was like a new Heroin addict. Never knowing what he was craving until he'd got that first hit. That first incredible hit of acknowledgment from everyone, that she was his. That he had the right to her. That he wasn't just her loser partner from the FBI that was wrecking her life and her career.

Oh, he could remember other times when people had thought they were married. In fact, when he thought back on it, people had assumed they were married from the first year they'd worked together. It had probably been written all over them back then, the belonging to one another. Hell, a bunch of redneck kids outside a barbecue place in  
rural Wisconsin had been able to see it. But now, he needed more. More than that. He needed what he'd gotten in Arcadia, Scully in his bed and other people who knew that she belonged there. Who accepted it as a given.

Because if he got that, then maybe Scully would begin to believe it too. If she wouldn't believe him, maybe she'd believe it from non-partisans, outsiders who knew neither of them. Maybe if she just heard it often enough, she'd be able to believe it was really all right.

He knew it was pathetic, but he'd even gone so far as to attempt to force it out of her in public. Like the day before yesterday, or maybe it was yesterday, it was so late now and they'd been up so long that he couldn't really be sure what day it was any more at all. He just knew it was very late, and he was driving toward a Mississippi hotel with  
Scully staring glassy-eyed and zombie-like at the passing mile markers shining in the headlights.

They'd been fairly fresh then, when he'd still had the energy to push her. Fresh after a night of sleep and lovemaking in the hotel they were returning to tonight, or this morning, seeing it was now 3:03 a.m. That meant they'd been up for around forty hours straight. No wonder he felt like shit. No wonder Scully was the walking dead. But then  
they were rested, fresh, and ready for the case of the Cat Who Walks Through Walls, escaped convict Wilson Pinker Rawls.

And he'd gotten his opportunity to push early on, too. As they'd arrived at the prison farm and had begun their investigation of the Warden's murder. He'd pulled out the roll of condoms from Pinker's personal effects and had held it up to Scully in some perverse attempt to try to force from her an acknowledgment of some portion of their  
union at least. "Oooouuuuch" he'd said, drawing it out like E.T. asking for the phone.

She'd just looked at him. No reaction. Nothing. Just like it was a rather tasteless and unprofessional joke, as it surely was. And the guard had actually shaken his head at him. Southern boys just didn't make comments like that around ladies, no matter what their profession. And Scully was obviously a lady.

That was the problem.

She was a lady. Like all the ones you read about in Victorian novels. A lady waiting there until some man came along and showed her he was worthy of her affection, and which point she would put her dainty hand in his and submit to his vile lusts while she thought about the future of the Empire.

He knew that that was part of it somewhere. Somewhere back in the recesses of her brain. That stupid-ass Cinderella complex that demanded that she didn't have feelings of her own and just waited around until some man came along to make her realize that it actually was ok to want things. That being good wasn't the only thing there was.

And he had tried to show her, but he was just so tired.

He just hated being the one to always have to put himself out there. To lay himself bare to her, for her scrutiny, her denial, her pleasure or her rejection. He felt like a martyr staked out for the vultures. Or one of her John Does down in the autopsy bay, just something else to be dissected and categorized until she finally disposed of him like all  
the others.

Despite her beauty, her intelligence, her integrity, it just wasn't surprising that Dana Scully was alone. Or viewed herself as being alone.

She wasn't a warm person. Oh, she had feelings, he knew that. Feelings that ran as deep as anyone's and deeper than those who never really thought about things ever could understand, but they really weren't worth anything because she never shared them. Feelings could do no one any good unless you let them out. They were like ideas that way. It wasn't until you bounced your feelings off someone else that their value could be known. And that Scully refused to do.

And people just got tired of waiting outside the damn tower for Rapunzel to finally decide to let down that hair. Normal people, that is.

But Mulder knew he wasn't a normal person. Just like she wasn't a normal person. That was one of the things that made them so suited for each other. 

She wouldn't talk about her feelings at all, and he splattered his around over everyone like they were fingerpaints in the three year-old room at the local preschool. And in the end, the result was the same. Scully said nothing so it was easy to believe she didn't feel anything, and he said so much that it was easy to write his feelings off as being  
shallow.

But neither of those things was true. He knew it. He just had to find the way to convince her. Before the attrition wore him down like it had all the others in her past and he dropped from her back like a dead flea or a lamprey that had lost its suction.

Was that what had done it with Scully and the others? With Jack, with that Ethan guy she'd dated when he'd first met her? Simple attrition? Exhaustion from beating themselves like the ocean against her rocks? He was so tired now. And so was she.

But he couldn't bring himself to give up. Not yet. He just needed a push. A push in the right direction, before they ended up estranged like the sad sad people they'd met today. Estranged and afraid of each other like June Gurwich and Pinker Rawls.

He knew he'd never forget what he'd seen that night. Scully cowering in the phone booth with that little dark-haired boy, Pinker standing naked like a madman in the center of the road while the woman that he'd loved barreled down at him like vengeance in a speeding car.

She'd wanted to kill him. She'd been frightened enough, had hated him enough to do it. The very same man she'd had her arm around in the picture that he'd kept all those years. The man that she'd hung on and smiled. The same man whose child she'd borne and had kept, even if she'd had her sister raise him.

Mulder had walked up to her in the car and had shut off the engine. The car spattered with the blood of her former lover. The man she'd hated. The man she'd killed.

It had all been so horribly sad. They could have been a family if they'd just been able to keep a handle on themselves. If Pinker had been able to control himself and do the right thing and if June hadn't been so weak, so downtrodden.

"What did he want?" June Gurwich had asked, still sitting in the car she'd used to run down her former lover, the father of her child.

"Maybe another chance," he'd told her. God knew, he and Scully needed one, too.

Mulder pulled into the parking lot of their motel and he and Scully stumbled from their car so slowly it was like they were walking under water. It was 3:17 a.m. and he felt so old. All he wanted was the opportunity to fall asleep in her arms. Every night, for the rest of his life.

She unlocked her door and Mulder just followed her in. He'd act like he had the right. All part of convincing her.

"Not tonight, Mulder," Scully said, her voice sounding as faded as she looked, hair hanging straight and limp against her pale, exhausted face. "Or this morning, or whatever the hell you call it after you've gone two days without sleep. I need some rest."

"I know," he said and took her in his arms, hoping she needed comfort as much as he did right now. You couldn't tell, of course, you never could tell with Scully. "So do I."

"Then what are you doing?" she asked, deliberately not leaning into it, not putting her arms around him. "You need to go to your own room and get some sleep."

Mulder just kept his mouth shut, rested his chin on the top of her head and shut his eyes. Maybe if he didn't say anything, he wouldn't say anything he'd regret.

"Look, Mulder," Scully said in the very rational voice she reserved for the times she felt he was being unreasonable. "I am exhausted. I'm just not in the mood for this right now, ok?"

"In the mood for what," he mumbled into her hair.

"This," she replied.

"And what's this?" he asked.

"Oh Lord," Scully sighed. "I am too tired to play psychology games right now, Mulder. I just want to sleep."

"Good," he said. "Then let's sleep."

"You want to sleep here," she said flatly.

"Bingo, the lady wins the prize," he said.

"You have a perfectly adequate bed in the other room, Mulder," Scully told him. "Maybe even with fewer lumps in it than this one. Why stay here?"

"Why don't we just cut to the chase here," Mulder said, letting her go. "I'll just go back outside and you can run me over with the car. We can skip all the middle part with the kid and the prison and all that and you can just put me out of my misery right now. Sound like a plan?"

"What the hell are you talking about, Mulder?" she asked, her eyes looking dull china blue in the dim light from the bad lamp on the bedside table.

"Did the tragedy of tonight's events even register with you, Scully?" he asked. "Or were you just so wrapped up in the threat to the boy, who you know Pinker didn't want to hurt in the first place, that you didn't notice?"

"Again, what are you talking about, Mulder?" Scully said, removing her trenchcoat and stretching her tired shoulders and back. "Maybe I'm just too tired to follow you here, but all I saw out there was a violent man who meant to force his will on a bunch of people who just wanted him to leave them alone. A bad man, a killer, hunting down  
something he viewed as his possession. Something that happened to be another human being. Last I knew, Mulder, slavery was illegal. Human beings don't own other human beings."

"But they do, Scully," he said softly. "Or they should. And I don't think it was about ownership, it was about belonging. And human beings do belong to other human beings, Scully. We all belong to someone, even Pinker knew that.

"I mean, there was a man equipped with totally inadequate tools attempting to reconstruct the only thing that mattered to him - his family. Yeah, he was violent. Yeah, he did it badly. But if you think it was about forcing others to his will, you're wrong. Because he knew. He knew she could kill him with that car. You'd just demonstrated that he couldn't walk through glass, and when the windshield hit him... He knew, Scully. And he let her do it anyway because he saw it in their faces. He saw what you said. He saw what  
you saw. The reflection of himself as a violent man who could do nothing but ruin everything for the people that he loved. The reflection of himself as someone they didn't love, as someone they feared, someone they hated, someone they only wanted to go away and leave them alone. He was trying to go home, Scully. And he did go home. And that's what he saw. The reflection of himself in their eyes, and he just couldn't live with it. So he let her kill him because he'd learned that there were no second chances with those who  
aren't willing to forgive you for your mistakes."

Scully just stood there looking at him dully in the lamplight. She still didn't get it.

Mulder sighed and felt in the pocket of his suitcoat for his room key. He waited for her to hit him with the car.

"You can sleep here if you want," Scully said, turning away from him and taking off her long pantsuit jacket as she headed for the bathroom.

She turned on the lights and the fluorescent glare made her squint, bringing tears to her eyes. He could see them there, glittering in the reflected brightness.

He waited for a long time to see if she was going to say anything else, but she just commenced with her nightly routine as if he wasn't there at all.

It was all he was going to get.

Mulder thought for another long moment about whether or not it was enough. And in the end he decided he was too tired to decide. If he tried to think now, he knew he'd end up like Pinker, trying to go home to be met with nothing but hostility by someone who had moved on without him and thought it was moving up.

Mulder took off his suitcoat and folded it neatly on the cheap motel chair. He'd let it be for now, let it stay as it was - in stasis. Because in the end, stasis was a lot easier to take than regret.

-30-


End file.
